I can spend hours in a bookstore browsing different books. So I was very excited when another bookstore opened in the center of Leiden, on Breestraat 113. Bookstore Babooka is a luxury book shop with collectors items and coffee table books that you can’t get any where else in town. The interior is modern with Jake Phipps lamps in front of the window. More than 250 titles are on display: from architecture, interior design, art, photography, to automotive and fashion. Titles by renowned publishing houses like Taschen, Te Neues and Phaidon and Gestalten.
Also in the shop is the book Goat, Greatest of all time, about Mohammed Ali. Taschen has created the book that is epic in scale and as unique and vibrant as the man himself. It is a tribute to his life and therfore reflects the scale of his achievements. The collectors item is 34 kgs (75 lbs) and is 50 cm x 50 cm (20″ x 20″) in size. Nearly 800 pages of archival and original photographs, graphic artwork, articles and essays – many of them previously unpublished – chronicle six decades of his life in stunning detail.
Owner is Niels Vreeling. Niels had been dreaming about a bookstore for ages. The front of the space is the bookstore and the back houses his graphic design studio Azeta. The store also has a web shop.
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That looks like a unique bookstore… I hope he survives as I know bookstores are struggling at the moment, but it would be a shame if special places like this are lost forever…